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I'm considering painting some imperial fists but using contrasts and metallic paints to give the force a metallic look that's then easy to weather. What paints would you use, yellow over gold or metal, highlights under the contrast or on top of it? Any advice would be much appreciated

Gold undercoat with yellow contrast over top.

Iyanden Yellow has an orange-red tint. Nazdreg Yellow has a brown tint. Iyanden would be brighter, Nazdreg more “natural” gold.

You could also go over silver, but I think gold looks better.

I think I have an example of Iyanden over gold... I’ll see if I can make a link with my phone... l lied, I’ll have to put it up tomorrow.

Put couple colours on my long suffering test ork. Mind you quick job and underlying colours might be affecting.

Right arm liberator gold and iyanden yellow. Backbag retribtor gold. Leg stormhost silver.

A heretical thought - why not just use metallic yellow paint and skip all the steps?
https://turbodork.com/collections/yellows/products/pucker-metallic-acrylic-paint

 totalfailure wrote:
A heretical thought - why not just use metallic yellow paint and skip all the steps?
https://turbodork.com/collections/yellows/products/pucker-metallic-acrylic-paint

Because then you skip any forms of shading and highlighting while building up the layers.
You’d then have to manually shade it and add layers, which would take even longer.

Use gold and highlight with silver then wash with brown (if you want GW style)

That will give you gold, not metallic yellow. If you want a metallic yellow, then the top layer needs to appear yellow, not look as if you were trying to get a gold effect. I would base in a dark metallic like lead belcher, then work up to a very bright silver on your high points. Over this you can then layer your yellow. After this I'd glaze some darker colours like brown and purple into the shadows to increase contrast.

I've never used contrast for layers so I really can't give much more than this. I would personally do non metallic techniques for a coloured metallic look.

Metallic yellow isn't a real thing though it's a hex colour the effect he's after is gold.

Edit: Something like this is as metallic yellow as you're going to get. Really if you want it to visually be yellow then paint it NMM not with metallic paints. Otherwise it's just going to look pretty much like yellow gold,

You could try combining VMC silver (or chrome) with a yellow artist ink (or similar yellow ink).

If you want to shade it, just do the shading with a darker ink, like maybe an ochre, or sepia.

I've not done it, but seems like it might work in theory. If that isn't yellow enough, you can always do all that then glaze over it with the ink as well, it will just dull the metallic sheen a bit.

 H wrote:
You could try combining VMC silver (or chrome) with a yellow artist ink (or similar yellow ink).

I would also consider the Vallejo Metal Medium from the Model Color line instead of the silver or chrome. It is basically a white metallic paint and is available at Hobby Lobby.

 Axel Dale wrote:
Metallic yellow isn't a real thing though it's a hex colour the effect he's after is gold.

Im thinking more along the lines of candy yellow. Translucent yellow layered over metal flake paint. I might be wrong but for imperial fists that makes more sense to me than gold.

Let’s give this a go...



You can see “shining gold” on the shoulder trim, and Iyanden Yellow over gold on the gun. You can’t really see the metallic sheen, because of my lighting, but it’s there and looks pretty good.

You can also see shining gold with Reikland Flesh Shade on it, on the Inquisition “I” as well as the handle nub poking out past his left hand.

In practice, you want to use a light / bright gold, for the same reason you normally use contrast over white primer. You need the colour beneath to provide the brightness to the contrast paint on top.

Make sure to tap on the picture, so when you zoom the detail will keep up.

I am a brand new painter. I am, though, thorough and inquisitive. I was considering an orange colored army. In researching paints I discovered Tamiya has acrylics designed for car models. They have flat, pearl and clear versions of colors. There is a chance the pearl yellow could give you that “look” The pearl has that shiny car appearance.

I kicked around orange and lime green. The Tamiya Cherry Lime is a pearl green. That color, though, rattle can only. It glimmered on finish/drying.

Maybe look at the yellows?

Metallic yellow; is just gold. If you want to make shinier yellow I would suggest trying yellow candy ink or a similar product on a white background.

EDIT: Gold is usually somewhat orange and desaturated so metallic yellow isn't exactly gold, but I'd imagine most people will see the two as the same.

I don’t agree with the metallic yellow = gold. What I did looks more like candy-apple red... but yellow. It has a “sparkly” element beneath the yellow.

It’s just not quite the same. In the model I posted above, the green is Warpstone Green Contrast over gold, and the burnt copper looking thing is Cygor Brown over gold. (With a light drybrush of Balthasar Gold to brighten the highlights). Compared to the straight gold on the handle, or the I, or the shoulder trim, those are like a candy-apple version of their colours. It’s not quite the same as a coloured metal, but more like a laquer-looking effect. It gets a bit of a colour-shifting effect. Subtle, but if you look at the helmet you can see the “highlights” are more yellow than green.

Hard to explain without being able to flip the model around in the light for you in person, but I feel there’s a meaningful difference between gold and metallic yellow.

Oh! If you look at the hand holding the trigger, the top of the hand is a good example of what I’m talking about, and the finger joints to the back of the glove have a sharper yellow to them than the rest of the hand.

Google up spectra chrome yellow. Might get you some ideas

Yeah metallic yellow isn't just gold. The best term I can think of for what you're trying to describe is candy yellow, similar to what they do on cars, where the colour is layered over a metal flake or glitter paint

Anyone got a good recipe for metallic grey? Hehehe.

Edit double post

The "candy apple yellow" is what I am thinking is the attempt.
The hot-rod folk start with a really shiny metal base coat so I would start with the highest brightness silver you can get.
Then a transparent bright yellow, is it just me or does the high contrast yellow look like it has some orange to it?
It is such a fine line to have enough pigment to bring out the yellow and not mask the metal flakes.
A high gloss clear coat would be the last step for depth.

I'd suggest a colder yellow for the main part too. A warmer yellow will lean more towards appearing gold.

This is a good learning point. Although gold appears yellow, in classical art it is usually done using more warm browns, and beiges, with tints of red. The yellow elements are usually quite minimal.

Thanks for all the helpful advice, the goal is to get a slightly metallic and weathered metal, so it seems like the best bet is to go with a metal basecoat, highlight up to silver and then apply yellow glazes or contrast. To avoid going to much in the gold direction, shading with browns and sepias seems to be a better bet than oranges

Orange shading wouldn't be that bad. I'd put some contrasting purple in those shadows too. A light glaze of a purple starting just before the shadow and pulling into the darkest parts. Doesn't really matter if its warm or cold purple as long as its not too red. That is more of an advanced technique though so it depends how far you want to go.

For the sake of it, I used Iyanden Yellow, and it has an orangey shade, but Nazdreg Yellow uses brown. Close to Snakebite Leather for the shade.